Using social media for cycle campaigning

Shaun McDonald @smsm1 Cycle Ipswich - 25 February 2015

Harry Leslie Smith

• 92 years old

• Written a book about austerity

• Regularly uses Twitter

Social Media

• WordPress – Cycle Ipswich website/Blog

• Facebook – Groups and sharing

• Twitter – 140 character messages and images

• Cyclescape – Cycle campaigner toolkit

What is WordPress?• Blogging platform

• Functionality expanded to be more like a content management platform

• Used for the Cycle Ipswich website

• Ideal for your own blog when writing longer items than Facebook or Twitter allow

Cycle Ipswich Website• You can login and create blog

posts, events etc.

• Create a draft post/page/event before publishing or making ready for review.

• Can schedule publishing for a future date.

• Can use your wordpress.com login so there isn’t another username and password to remember.

• Mobile friendly!

Events

• Newly added plugin

• Can easily add events, including optionally booking places

• Event location support

• Calendar sync support

Google Groups• A mailing list with a web

interface

• Messages grouped by thread

• Individual emails or digest

• Bad practice to reply to a digest email – better to use individual emails or go to the web interface to reply

• Filter your email from the mailing list into a folder

Cycle Ipswich Google Group

• Fairly active

• In past year between 13 and 131 messages per month

• Regular discussions

• Some councillors are on the group who provide advice as appropriate

Sign up to Cycle Ipswich Google Group

• Go to https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/cycle-ipswich

• Create/Login to your Google account – don't need to use a gmail.com address

• I login with my gmail email, and have email sent to another email account

• Can treat as a mailing list by sending mail to cycle-ipswich@googlegroups.com

CI Google Group Stats

Google Docs• Same Google account login

• Multiple people live editing the same document

• Word processing

• Spreadsheets

• Presentations

• Activity streams

Sharing Options of GDocs

• Explicit list of people

• Anyone with the link

• Publicly searchable

Google Plus

• Google’s latest attempt at social networking

• Integrates with other Google products

• Get some interaction with some people who get news there, thus worth auto posting blog posts etc there

What is Facebook?• Able to “friend” people.

• Can “like” organisations to get updates from them.

• Can show personal info, such as school, university, work, and where you live.

• Can add relationships such as wife, brother, mother, father, daughter, uncle, aunt, etc.

• Sharing text, links, photos, etc

Facebook permissions• Can choose who can see your

posts for example:

• Public - everyone with a Facebook account

• Friends – only people you have accepted friendship

• Friends of friends

• Specific groups of people

Facebook groups• People can discuss and share

information

• Groups can be open or closed

• Can be a good way to tap into an audience you might not get to through mediums

• Optionally can get notifications when people post to the group

Facebook Pages• Generally used by

organisations or companies to push out content

• Can like a page to get updates and show support

• Likes can show how popular you are and updates are seen by those who have liked your page

Facebook events• Can be added within a group

• Lets everyone within the group know about the event

• People can say they are coming

• Get reminders of the event

• Share the event and invite other people to encourage them to attend

• Don't spam!

Privacy Settings

Privacy shortcuts

What is Twitter?

• Short 140 character messages

• Follow other people or organisations

• Very useful for finding out what other cycle campaign groups are doing

Replies• All usernames start with the @

symbol – For example @smsm1 or @CycleIpswich

• To reply click the reply button, the person’s twitter handle will be auto filled for you

• Only people who follow you and the mentioned person will see the tweet in their timeline

• Add a dot (.) or start writing before the mentions so all your followers see the tweet

Conversations

• You can see all of the replies linked together

• Useful when you see a reply so you know what they are referring to

Mentions• Similar to replies

• If someone mentions you, you will see the tweet in the notifications or mentions lists

• As an analogy to email, think of it like cc’ing those people

• For example: “It’s been great to hear what @london_cycling are doing at the #Space4CyclingConf”

Hashtags• Allows you to easily search for

things people are talking about a particular topic

• Regularly used by TV shows for audience participation or at conferences so that information spreads more

• Clicking them brings up the search of all tweets containing the hashtag

• Slight variations

Retweets (RT)• Allows you to share something

someone has posted to your own followers

• Hundreds or Thousands of retweets means that the tweet has gone viral and likely been seen by tens of thousands of people or more

• One tweet by some celebrity or organisation can cause an avalanche of further RTs or favourites

• Find new people to follow

Retweets by prominent accounts

• 1 tweet retweeted by a prominent account can suddenly get a significant number of favourites or further retweets

• Websites have been known to go down due to e.g. Stephen Fry retweeting or tweeting about something

Quoted Retweets• Sometime called old style

retweets

• Before the current RT functionality was introduced, people would manually share things on to their own timeline

• Character limit caused problems

• Sometimes still useful e.g. for clarifications, adding information or comments

HT• “Hat tip” or “heard through” –

short form of “via”

• A way to acknowledge where you got the info for the tweet from

• Good practice in terms of attribution

• Can combine with a reply if wanting to acknowledge the source tweet

Favourites

• Allows you to have a way to easily get back to good tweets

• Can show you quietly agree with something, without retweeting it to your followers

• The list is public so people can view it via your profile

Sharing images

• Can easily share photos and images

• Often used for highlighting examples of good/bad cycle infrastructure

• Resolution can be reduced by Twitter thus have to be careful with detailed images

Saved Searches

• Useful if interested in a particular topic

• Can follow up on particular concerns affecting local area or a particular issue

• Also popular searches

Many applications• Don’t need to use the Twitter website

• Official Twitter Android, iOS, Mac apps

• Various third party apps and integrations with other software

• e.g. auto tweet a link to your new blog posts when published

Private twitter accounts• You can make your Twitter timeline private - profile still

public

• Only people you have allowed to follow you can see your tweets

• Retweets are prevented

• Everyone is expected to respect that you’ve made your twitter account private

• However anyone can copy the text or take a screenshot and share to others!

Location• You can add location meta

data to your tweets so that people know where you sent it

• Only exposed in some apps

• Can turn it on or off in your Twitter settings or on a tweet by tweet basis

• Often used for analysis and mapping of trends for example http://trendsmap.com

Some people to follow

Suffolk Spokes People• @SuffolkSpokes

• Suffolk County Council sustainable transport people

• Often ask about specific things that they are working on for example:

• Cycle Parking in Ipswich

• Problem routes in various towns as part of the cycle infrastructure reviews

Cycling Embassy of Great Britain

• @GBCycleEmbassy

• Cycling organisation which promotes high quality cycle infrastructure

• Write a weekly blog roundup of cycling related blog posts and news articles

• Cycle infrastructure safaris

London Cycling Campaign

• @london_cycling

• Main cycling campaign in London

• Various major cycling infrastructure schemes happening in London after lots of campaigning

Carlton Reid

• @carltonreid

• Editor of BikeBiz.com and bikehub.co.uk

• Author iPayRoadTax.com and roadswerenotbuildforcars.com

Pedestrian Liberation

• @PedestrianLib

• Highlights pedestrian issues which are usually also relevant or topical to cycling

Streisand effect

• Trying to hide information bring more attention to the information and puts it into greater circulation

• For example the Conservative party deleting old party speeches from before the last General Election

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Cyclescape

• Toolkit to list issues with cycle infrastructure

• Enables discussion about infrastructure issues to be linked to a location on a map

• Allows people not interested in campaigning to alert campaigners about issues

Issues• Report problems that need to

be fixed

• Always have a geographical location – point, line, or area

• Avoid large areas

• Be specific

• Can vote on issues that are important to you

Discussions• Each issue can have one or more

discussions with different permissions

• Discussions can be attached to a group with or without an issue (group administrative issues)

• 4 levels of permissions:

• Public

• Public within a group

• Group only

• Group committee only

Contributing to discussions• Choose one of the tabs (text,

photo, link, deadline/date, or attachment)

• Type details and post the message

• Can also reply to email message notifications

• Cannot currently start a new thread from email

• One issue - one discussion

Groups• Usually mirror cycle campaign

groups

• Have a defined area

• Any issues created that are within the group’s area will show in the group’s issue list

• Allows you to collaborate with others in the same organisation without needing to do so publicly

Group profile

• Information about the group

• If you are not yet a member, there will be an option to join

• Need to be approved to join by a member of the group committee

• http://cycleipswich.cyclescape.org

User profile• Lets other people find out

about you – you choose how much you want to share in the about section

• Profile picture/avatar

• Can restrict visibility to only members of your groups (See “manage my preferences”)

• List threads you’ve recently contributed to and recently reported issues

Cyclescape notifications• Options to be notified about

new issues within your locations and groups

• Can automatically follow discussions

• Choose to be involved with group administrative discussions (i.e. no location attached to the issue)

• Only email notifications are currently available

My locations• Add a list of areas that you are

interested in, for example:

• Your route to work

• National Cycle Network routes

• The area of Ipswich

• You’ll be notified of new issues and discussions within these areas based on your preferences